#0|3123733|Decipher|Album|After Forever|May 27, 2001|Symphonic metal|Transmission|Decipher(2001)|54:45|Stephen van Haestregt and Oscar Holleman|Exordium(2003)|Prison of Desire(2000)|June-August 2001|*Allmusic *Metal Storm|After Forever|Decipher (album)
Decipher is the second album by Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever, released in 2001. The music of the band reaches its full potential in this album with the use of live classical instruments and a complete choir to back-up the soprano voice of lead singer Floor Jansen. The complex arrangements, that mix classical and ethnical influences with death and gothic metal, produce an unusual and unique blending. Thrown in the mix are also a duet of soprano and tenor voices in "Imperfect Tenses" and the recording of the late Israeli PM Yizhak Rabin voice during the Peace treaty signing ceremony on the 26th of October 1994 on "Forlorn Hope". This is the last After Forever album with guitarist and founder Mark Jansen, who left the band soon after its release.
The album has been re-released by Transmission Records in 2003 in a limited edition of 5,000 copies worldwide. The limited edition in digipack had an extended booklet, a sticker with new artwork and two bonus live tracks.
Personnel
;Band members
*Floor Jansen - vocals
*Mark Jansen - guitars, grunts
*Sander Gommans - guitars
*Luuk van Gerven - bass guitar
*Lando van Gils - keyboards
*André Borgman - drums, acoustic guitars
;Production
*Stephen van Haestregt - producer, engineer
*Oscar Holleman - producer, mixing
*Hans van Vuuren - executive producer, coordination and research
*Peter van 't Riet - mastering
;Additional musicians
*Cees' Kieboom - piano, keyboards
*Ebred Reijen - solo violin
*Noemi Bodden - violin
*Janine Baller - viola
*Carla Schrijner - violoncello
*Roxanne Steffen - double bass
*Irma Kort - oboe on "Intrinsic" and "My Pledge of Allegiance #1"
*Jack Pisters - citar on "My Pledge of Allegiance #2"
*Rein Kolpa - tenor vocals on "Imperfect Tenses"
*Hans Cassa - choral bass vocals
*Caspar de Jonge - choral tenor vocals
*Marga Okhuizen - choral alto vocals
*Ellen Bakker - choral soprano vocals
References
Category:2001 albums
Category:After Forever albums
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nl:Decipher
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This text has been derived from Ultimate Collection (Eurythmics album) on Wikipedia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0Artist/Band Information
Eurythmics are a British pop rock duo, formed in 1980, currently disbanded, but known to reunite from time to time. Consisting of members Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart (both previously in the bands The Catch and The Tourists), the duo released their first album in 1981 to little fanfare, but went on to achieve global success with their second album Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), released in 1983. The title track was a worldwide hit, topping the chart in various countries including the U.S..
Eurythmics went on to release a string of hit singles and albums before they split in 1990. By this time, Stewart had already embarked on a parallel music career and was also a sought-after record producer, while Lennox began a solo recording career in 1992 with her debut album Diva. After almost a decade apart, Eurythmics reformed in the late 1990s to record their ninth album, Peace which was released in late 1999. They reunited again in 2005 to release the single "I've Got a Life", as part of a new Eurythmics compilation album, Ultimate Collection.
History
1976–1982: Formation and In the Garden
Lennox and Stewart met in 1975 in a restaurant in London, where Lennox worked at that time. They first played together in 1976 in the punk rock band The Catch. After releasing one single as The Catch in 1977, the band evolved into The Tourists. Stewart and Lennox were also romantically involved. The Tourists achieved modest commercial success, but the experience was reportedly an unhappy one. Personal and musical tensions existed within the group, whose main songwriter was Peet Coombes, and legal wranglings happened with the band's management, publishers and record labels. Lennox and Stewart felt the fixed band line-up was an inadequate vehicle to explore their experimental creative leanings and decided their next project should be much more flexible and free from artistic compromise. They were interested in creating pop music, but wanted freedom to experiment with electronics and the avant-garde. Calling themselves Eurythmics (after a style of Greek dance called "Eurhythmics" that Lennox had encountered as a childhttp), they decided to keep themselves as the only permanent members and songwriters, and involve others in the collaboration "on the basis of mutual compatibility and availability." The duo signed to RCA Records. At this time, Lennox and Stewart also decided to discontinue their romantic relationship. During the period that Lennox and Stewart were in The Tourists, and later as Eurythmics, they were managed by Kenny Smith and Sandra Turnbull of Hyper Kinetics Ltd.
They recorded their first album Cologne with Conny Plank (who had produced the later Tourists sessions). This resulted in the album In the Garden, released in October 1981. The album mixed psychedelic, krautrock and electropop influences, and featured contributions from Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit (of Can), drummer Clem Burke (of Blondie), Robert Görl (of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft), and flautist Tim Wheater. A couple of the songs were co-written by guitarist Roger Pomphrey (now a TV director). The album received an indifferent critical reception and was not a commercial success (though the debut single "Never Gonna Cry Again" made the UK charts at #63). Lennox and Stewart then activated their new Eurythmics mode of operation by touring the record as a duo, accompanied by backing tracks and electronics, carted around the country themselves in a horse-box.
During 1982 the duo retreated to Chalk Farm in London, and used a bank loan to establish a small 8-track studio above a picture framing factory, giving them freedom to record without having to pay expensive studio fees. They began to employ much more electronics in their music, collaborating with Raynard Faulkner and Adam Williams, recording many tracks in the studio and playing live using various line-up permutations. However, the three new singles they released that year ("This Is the House", "The Walk" and "Love Is a Stranger") all performed badly on initial release in the UK. Although their mode of operation had given them the creative freedom they desired, commercial success was still eluding them, and the responsibility of running so many of their affairs personally (down to transporting their own stage equipment) took its toll on both of them. Lennox apparently suffered at least one nervous breakdown during this period, while Stewart was hospitalised with a collapsed lung.
1983–1984: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and Touch
SweetDreamsMusicVideo.jpgthumbleftAnnie Lennox in the music video for "Sweet Dreams". Eurythmics' commercial breakthrough came with their second album, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), released in January 1983. The successful title track featured a dark and powerful sequenced synth bass line and a dramatic video that introduced the now orange crew-cut Lennox to audiences. The song reached no.2 on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the year's biggest sellers, and later topped the US charts. The band's fortunes changed immensely from this moment on, and Lennox quickly became a pop icon, gracing the covers of numerous magazines including Rolling Stone. Their previous single, "Love Is a Stranger", was also re-released and became another chart success. The video for the song saw Lennox in many different character guises, a concept she would employ in various subsequent videos. The album's working title was Invisible Hands (as was a track left off the album), inspiring the name of UK independent company Invisible Hands Music - known for releasing music by Hugh Cornwell, Mick Karn and Hazel O'Connor. The album featured also a cover of the 1968 Sam & Dave hit "Wrap It Up", performed as a duet between Lennox and Green Gartside of Scritti Politti.
The duo quickly recorded a follow-up album, Touch, which was released in November 1983. It became the duo's first no.1 album in the UK, and also spawned three major hit singles. "Who's That Girl?" was a top 3 hit in the UK, the video depicting Lennox as both a blonde chanteuse and as a gender-bending Elvis Presley clone. It also featured cameo appearances by Hazel O'Connor, Bananarama (including Stewart's future wife, Siobhan Fahey), Kate Garner of Haysi Fantayzee, Thereza Bazar of Dollar, Jay Aston and Cheryl Baker of Bucks Fizz, Kiki Dee, Jacquie O'Sullivan and the gender-bending pop singer Marilyn, who would go on to musical success of his own that same year. The upbeat, calypso-flavoured "Right by Your Side" showed a different side of Eurythmics altogether and also made the Top 10, and "Here Comes the Rain Again" (number eight in the UK, number four in the U.S.) was an orchestral/synth ballad (with orchestrations by Michael Kamen).
In 1984 RCA released Touch Dance, a mini-album of remixes of four of the tracks from Touch, aimed at the club market. The remixes were by prominent New York producers Francois Kevorkian and John "Jellybean" Benitez. Also released in 1984 was Eurythmics' soundtrack album 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother). Virgin Films had contracted the band to provide a soundtrack for Michael Radford's modern film adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, Radford later said that the music had been "foisted" on his film against his wishes, and that Virgin had replaced most of Dominic Muldowney's original orchestral score with the Eurythmics soundtrack (including the song "Julia", which was heard during the end credits). However, the record was presented as "music derived from the original score of Eurythmics for the Michael Radford film version of Orwell's 1984". Eurythmics charged that they had been misled by the film's producers as well, and the album was withdrawn from the market for a period while matters were litigated. The album's first single, "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)", was a top 5 hit in the UK, Australia and across Europe, and a major dance success in the United States, but its supposedly suggestive title (actually taken from the newspeak phrase used in Orwell's book) resulted in many U.S. pop radio stations refusing to play the track.
1985–1986: Be Yourself Tonight and new musicial direction
Eurythmics 06101986 02 270.jpgthumbright190pxAnnie Lennox performing during Revenge Tour in 1986.
The duo's next album, Be Yourself Tonight, was produced in a week in Paris. It showcased much more of a "band style" and a centred sound (with an R&B influence), with real drums, brass, and much more guitar from Stewart. Almost a dozen other musicians were enlisted, including members of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, guest harmonica from Stevie Wonder, bass guitar from Dean Garcia, string arrangements by Michael Kamen, and Lennox singing duets with Aretha Franklin and Elvis Costello. It continued the duo's transatlantic chart domination in 1985, and contained four hit singles; "Would I Lie to You?" was a U.S. Billboard top five hit and Australian number one, while "There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)" (featuring Wonder's harmonica contribution) became their first and only UK number one single. "It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)" and the feministic Franklin duet (originally intended for Tina Turner) "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" also rode high in the charts.
1986–1989: Revenge, Savage and We Too Are One
David A. Stewart Rock am Ring 1987.jpgleftthumbDave Stewart at Rock am Ring in Germany, 1987.
This text has been derived from Eurythmics on Wikipedia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0
